Mainsprings
by Acey Dearest
Summary: He meets him, really meets him, in the bathroom of the grimiest club in the greater Tokyo area. Two years of memories versus thousands, and a proposition. Katou/Kira, implied Kira/Alexiel.


"Mainsprings"

by Acey

Author's Notes: Some speculation on the extent of Katou's abilities, mature content. Slash. Katou/Kira, Kira/Alexiel.

_People whose mainsprings are broken are better off dead_. –Margaret Mitchell (paraphrased)

He meets him, really meets him, in the bathroom of the grimiest club in the greater Tokyo area. It's 1997, he's fifteen and throwing up into the sink.

"Sakuya."

There's something about seeing him in the half-light that makes him seem a hundred years older for the barest of seconds. Then Katou blinks and the illusion disappears, and the only one standing there is Sakuya Kira after all, in all his sixteen years of defiance and debauchery, acne meds and class-cutting.

He hasn't changed out of his school uniform, halfway unbuttoned—doubtless thanks to some girl in the club. The jacket's buttons reflect the light from the naked bulbs.

Cold hands with too-long fingernails run over and past his cheeks, to the nape of his neck. Kira's holding his hair back, has the strands between his fingers. Katou retches, vomits into the sink.

"Can you stand up?" Kira's blue eyes narrow. Katou nods.

"All right." Kira pauses for what seems like an eternity, then, "I'll take you home."

"Don't have one."

"Then I'll take you to mine, whatever."

"What?"

"I said I'll take you to mine." Katou notes the scent of beer on Kira's breath, realizes he's just drunk enough to keep on talking. "It's not like the old man's never dealt with me inviting over random people before."

"'M not random," Katou manages before he vomits again and the world goes black.

--

He wakes up the next morning alone in Kira's bed. He sits up, head already pounding, looks around the surroundings.

Kira's room in sparse as a jail cell. There's a picture of some model hanging on the inside of his door, curly brown hair, blue eyes, but other than that the room's bare except for the essentials. Alarm clock. CD player. A tiny T.V. with a VCR attached.

It smells like cigarettes. Katou digs around and finds cartons of Salems beneath neatly-folded boxers in Kira's dresser. The accompanying lighter, plus a box of matches, is on top of the TV. Katou takes the opportunity to light up at the other teenager's expense, casually flicking the ashes onto his pillow.

"What do you think you're doing?"

He hadn't even heard the door open. In five seconds at best Kira's come back from wherever he was in the apartment to sit down beside him on the bed.

"Smoking."

"Kind of crass to help yourself to someone else's cigarettes, you know." But Kira barely sounds like he cares at all. He's got a bowl of oatmeal in his lap, eating. There's something weird about the way Kira's holding that spoon, something awkward, but Katou can't place it well enough to bother mentioning it.

"I'm the guest here, aren't I?" Katou blows the smoke in Kira's face just to spite him. His head's killing him.

Kira laughs then, an unexpected harsh rasp.

"Which means you shouldn't get too comfortable." He sets the bowl down on top of the dresser, motions for Katou to get up. Then he starts making up the bed.

(hospital corners)

(he must've gone to camp as a kid or something)

Katou can't think of anything to say for awhile, just stands and watches while Kira smoothes out the sheets with that same odd awkwardness, until—

"Salems suck, you know."

Kira doesn't bat an eye.

"So quit smoking mine."

Katou takes another exaggerated drag, even though Kira's back is turned. It doesn't really taste as bad as he's making it out to be.

"I didn't figure you'd like the menthol crap. I'm disappointed." Katou fingers the cigarette, decides against stubbing it out early. "Thought you'd like… I dunno. Camels or Winstons or something."

"I've never tried them."

"Really?"

"Really." Kira sits back down on the bed. "How's your head?"

"Did you even have to ask? You should've come in there half an hour earlier, maybe then I wouldn't be having the hangover from hell."

"Suck it up. It's not like you're the only one." Kira shrugs. "You're in junior high, right?"

"Same one you were in," Katou shoots back. "You don't remember me, do you?"

But remember isn't the right word. Remembering is vague glances of Kira, up and down the hallway, with his glasses in his front pocket like an absolute nerd while he made out with another in a long series of girls between classes. Watching him light up from a distance outside the schoolyard, by the parking lot.

No, Kira doesn't remember him.

Kira cocks his head to the side and shrugs. The oatmeal's still on the dresser, forgotten.

"I thought you kind of looked familiar, but hell, a lot of people look familiar when you've had about six beers. And you said my name."

Katou rolls his eyes.

"Everyone that went to our junior high knows your name, that doesn't mean anything.

(liar)

"I'm Katou."

--

He spends a lot of time over at Kira's during the next two years. Kira pierces his ears, Kira binges with him, Kira provides a place to sleep, a place to get stoned.

On good days Kira tutors him, mostly history—weird that for a kid that seems so smart and reads so much, the only subject Kira's any good at is history. He'll go over the names and dates with a tired patience, trying to drill them into Katou's head just long enough so he can pass the tests.

It should make Katou feel like Kira's personal charity case, but it doesn't.

(he's too much of a bastard for that)

Maybe it's because Kira doesn't seem to get any real enjoyment out of anything normal, not sex with the girls from high school, not drinking, not clubbing. Not helping Katou out of tough spots ranging from drug busts to homework.

He realizes in a rare moment of sobriety that half the time, Kira acts more like an actor than a teenager. And by that time Katou's spending five days out of seven at Kira's house, at Kira's hideout.

--

When he meets up with Kira again after everything, after dying, after wandering through Hades, he isn't surprised when seeing that actor is a welcome relief. In Katou's head, anyway, it becomes high school all over again. It used to be lights-out, curtains closed, a quarter-sheet of LSD blotter paper on the floor and a dozen cans of beer on the dresser and the bed. Reality used to be staring Kira straight in the face the morning after a binge, watching him walk off without a word to take a shower as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

And maybe to Kira it was. Kira always ended up hungover afterwards, same as Katou, dull blue eyes shot with red blood vessels behind his glasses, one hand clutching his head. He'd go to school anyway about half the time afterwards, pained expression stuck on his face.

He never touched anything but alcohol during their impromptu drugfests.

At least, that's what Katou remembers.

Memories are in short supply, these days. At first he chalked it up to stress, pressure—the fact that he's under the gun and has been ever since he ended up Setsuna's guardian, maybe even before. Then he assumed it was simple withdrawal.

He knows better now. His mind's slipping.

He's caught himself biting back stupid questions: staring quietly at Setsuna and wondering who the hell he is, looking over at Kira and with a dim sort of horror not being able to recall Kira's first name.

Katou can take anyone's face he wants but the face he's losing is his own. It's been happening for awhile now—he blanks out all of a sudden, feels the flesh on his face smooth over for seconds at a time before he can find something _real_ to mentally clutch at, something concrete to bring his sanity back—bring his face back.

Bring a face back. Katou knows it's pure luck that's kept him from taking someone else's identity on accident for any longer than a couple minutes when he blanks out. That day's coming—he can feel it, somehow. Yue Katou, the hard-bitten individualist, losing his memory, mind, and face faster than he can smoke a joint.

He's trying to stop it. He'd write it all down on paper, if he could find any in a place like this, scribble his vital statistics on sheets and fold it into his jeans pocket. He'd ask Kira to remind him, if that wouldn't be such a miserable blow to what was left of his pride. If Kira wouldn't give him that penetrating look and ask why and force him to explain.

Katou's come up with a different plan than those, no less humiliating but maybe, if he plays it right, it'll go by fast. No questions asked.

--

He knows from experience Kira thinks sleep is more a suggestion than a requirement for life, and if by some miracle Kira has actually gone to bed, he'll wake him up. Katou just sits there for a minute on top of his bed. Kira glances at him, expectant.

"Couldn't sleep?"

"Nope. I wanted your smokes." Katou winces as he says it. Kira gives him a glare but throws the half-empty pack at him.

(course they're salems)

(he was so particular about his damn menthol cigarettes)

(wasn't he?)

Katou takes a cigarette from the pack anyway, flicks his lighter on automatic, hands trembling as he fingers the cigarette before putting it to his mouth.

"What's the matter?" Kira leans over, flipping on the lamp. Katou rolls his eyes when he sees that Kira's gone to bed completely dressed.

"Nothing. Just…" he trails, half-expecting Kira to derisively fill in the blanks like always. "I'm gonna die here, Kira. You're gonna die."

"We're already dead." The barest smile twitches on Kira's angular face and for a minute Katou wants to hate Kira for the abject sin of being right.

"But not in the _real_ way, now are we?" Katou's half-asking, half-snapping out the words. "We're still around. Still talking. Still alive enough to—to smoke and eat and—"

"So death's relative. Doesn't matter."

"It does matter! Damn it, Kira, hear me out!" He reaches out and grabs Kira's shoulders, shaking them. And he notices as if for the first time how thin they are, how the bones practically jut out of the flesh. An animated corpse, that's all he's shaking, with the veneer of life peeling away like wallpaper.

(just like me)

(christ he's just like me)

Katou lets him go. Kira's expression takes a minute to change, almost soften.

"I'm listening. What do you want?"

"I—Kira, please…"

He stubs out the cigarette between his fingers, drops it on the floor. He touches Kira's shirt again, fingers on the buttons. Unbuttons the top one. The next one. Kira hasn't moved. The next one. Half the buttons are undone and Kira's just sitting there. In the dim light Katou can make out the top half of the bloodstain on Kira's chest.

Kira grabs Katou's hands then. The grip's halfhearted at best.

"You don't want this."

"Who else am I gonna get it from? Setsuna?" Katou snorts. "Kurai? It's not about you personally, Kira, s'about—"

(it's about convincing myself i'm alive)

(i'm still real, i'm someone)

(i'm katou, katou, second-year in high school, seventeen years old, one hundred seventy-seven centimeters, addicted to cigarettes, speed, and heroin in that order—and my best friend, he's sakuya kira, he's nothing but a damn punk who's beat up half the senior class and fucked the other half)

(and i'm not really dead there aren't really any angels this isn't happening)

(and i'm not forgetting who i am i'm not i _can't_)

"S'about—"

Kira puts Katou's hands in his lap and starts undoing the rest of the buttons himself.

--

It's not what he's expected. Kira's not a gentle person, he'd known that for years (hadn't he?) but he's not a forceful kisser. If anything, he seems hesitant, trailing his fingers through Katou's hair, kissing him mostly on the collarbone instead of the lips. Halfhearted. Katou doesn't even have to glance down to know Kira's not aroused at all, and neither is he.

He almost wants to tell Kira they can stop, but then he realizes again he'd never get it from anyone else.

"At least pretend you're interested. We're not in high school anymore, nobody else is in line to jump into bed with you."

And somehow he hears Kira's rasp of a laugh for the second time in his life. Somehow it's enough to make Kira pull him close enough that he tugs at the hem of Katou's shirt next, lifting it up with a betraying casual deftness. Katou takes it off the rest of the way, tosses it onto the bed.

"Maybe I knew what you meant."

Kira mumbles the words against Katou's throat, a statement, really, so Katou doesn't answer, except to tilt his head enough to let Kira kiss him, put his tongue in Kira's mouth just to try and make him quiet. For a second or two there Katou is, in Kira's still strangely warm mouth, a mouth that tastes like menthol cigarettes and codeine syrup. But then Kira pulls away at the silence.

"About what?" Katou snaps.

"About dying. See, man, the French," he says, running his fingers down Katou's back, "used to fuck each other after a morning at the guillotines."

"What, were you there or some crap like that?"

(god, stop it, kira)

(i didn't come in here to talk to you and you know it, you damn well _know_ it, so stop—)

"Yeah. I saw it happen during the Terror. Saw Robespierre out there leading them on, sometimes. But he didn't lead Alexiel on. I was standing in the cart with her that day."

"Kira, I don't care."

He keeps on as though he hadn't been interrupted at all.

"I couldn't help her. They had me there on some trumped-up charge, I'd spoken badly of Robespierre's butchery and defended Alexiel on top of that. I didn't have a weapon then and there was such a crowd—they'd bring their children to the executions, in those early days. I stood and watched them tie the kerchief over her eyes, bend her over to the platform. Slice that pretty head off… have it fall into the bloody little wicker basket and that was the end of the girl France called the angel of assassination. I saw someone take her head from the basket and slap the cheek before it was my date with the gui—"

"Shut up," Katou mutters, pulling away. "That doesn't have a damn thing to do with this."

"Sure it does. Death and sex are trapped together in a ballroom dance across the floor." The corner of Kira's mouth tilts into a crooked smile.

"Whatever. If you were backing out you could've just told me instead of giving me some crap about Alexiel. Bastard."

"I'm not backing out. I'm just telling you." As if to prove it Kira grabs Katou's wrist.

(same old bastard)

"Forget it. Forget it, y'know? Fuck you. I don't even want it anymore." Katou jerks his wrist back with a vengeance. His face is burning and he wishes Kira had had the decency to turn off the light when they started this. He takes his shirt from the bed.

"Katou—damn it, Katou, I didn't mean it like—"

"Moon over your dead girlfriend all you want. Never mind your dead best friend. She's been gone for God knows how long but I'm the one that's still around. I'm the one losing my mind, I'm the one begging you to have sex with me just to make myself remember. But you can't even manage to make out without talking about her."

"Katou."

Kira grabs him by the shoulder.

"Katou, look, I'm sorry—"

"How bad do you fucking want her, huh?"

"What?"

Thick, curly brown hair, pale face, big blue eyes. The last thing he'd seen before he'd died the first time. That face—that body, round, firm breasts—gently curved hips. Katou focuses on that image, burns it into his mind like a brand and feels it shift his features into hers. He shoves off his jeans the second before they stop fitting. And he watches with a heated satisfaction as all the color drains from Kira's face.

He's trying to avert his eyes, Katou can tell, but he can't quite seem to manage it. Katou's not helping things, staring up at him, sitting up on the bed without a word at first. Kira's too stunned to even remember to let go of (alexiel's) his shoulder. Wait, no, now he's clutching at it, nails biting into the skin. Katou forces himself not to wince, not to pull back.

"Impressed?" He can't copy her voice worth a damn, but that doesn't matter. The rest of her is all here. "It's what you wanted, isn't it? Don't you worry about it, Kira, I'd be glad to shut up during the actual—"

--

He meets him, really meets him, in the bedroom of an abandoned building in one of the finer corners of Anagura. It's 1999 in a world where time has no meaning, he's seventeen and he wants to throw up.

finis


End file.
